


Letting Her Hair Down

by servantofclio



Series: Val Shepard [13]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 23:31:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5721145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garrus loves Shepard's hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letting Her Hair Down

**Author's Note:**

> While Shepards of all hair colors and styles are fantastic, including no hair at all, this particular Shepard happens to have long blond hair, which is what inspired the ficlet.

Garrus loved Shepard’s hair.

He’d been simply curious about it at first. She always kept it up in a knot; he wasn’t sure why she didn’t wear it shorter, like Kelly or Gabby did, but she wore her hair the same, day in and day out, even after Cerberus had brought her back. At first he hadn’t thought anything of the shape of it, assumed it was a natural variation, like color. But then he’d seen Williams untie her dark hair from its tidy knot and shake it out. He’d stared in shock, and she’d laughed, before explaining about hair styles and practicality and Alliance regulations regarding long hair. More than he’d ever known about the subject before, and more interesting than he would have thought. But back then he’d never seen Shepard’s hair down at all.

So he’d asked, that first night with Shepard, if he could touch it, not quite sure if he was transgressing. She’d smiled, though, and let him help her take it down, and he hadn’t been prepared for what it actually felt like, soft and fluid, or what it looked like, loose and falling around her shoulders, especially with her lips parted and her eyes gone wide and dark…

These days, more often than not, she let him be the one to take it down, a marker of their private time together.

He’d come into her quarters (still hers, though he shared more often than not) to find her hunched over her console, a stack of data pads at her elbow. She didn’t turn, although she mumbled out a greeting. He approached and lightly rested both hands on her shoulders. He could feel the tension even through the fabric of her uniform shirt. “How’s it going?”

She hit send and rubbed her eyes. “It’s going.”

“Hm.” He chuckled, a bare breath, and pressed more firmly into the taut muscle. If she wanted to keep working, she’d brush him off now. Instead, she sighed and let her head fall forward, stretching out her slender neck. Obligingly, he stroked both his thumbs up the back of her neck and pressed into the little knots of tension at the base of her skull, carefully avoiding her amp port. She sighed again, this time with an edge of a moan, her shoulders slumping and relaxing a little under the pressure. Garrus smiled to himself and kept working, slow and steady, drawing out the lines of strain as best he could. When he thought he’d soothed the worst of it, he kept one hand at the base of her neck, working gently at the bunched-up muscles on either side, and with the other, reached up to loosen the tight knot her hair was in. A pin popped out almost immediately, bouncing off the desk with a plink and disappearing. Garrus flicked a mandible in annoying, but Shepard chuckled.

“I’m always finding those in the weirdest places,” she said.

“Hm. Sorry?”

“No need.” She sighed and flexed her shoulders. “It’s worth it.”

So he tugged on the long coil, freeing it from the pins that kept it in place. A few of them caught in the length, so he plucked them out and laid them on her desk. A few others scattered with a series of soft clinks. He untwisted the coil, carefully, the weight of it in his palm heavier than it looked. Shepard sighed again, a little more of the tension easing out of her neck. With the hair untwisted, he laid it down the center of her back, liquid gold against the dark blue of her Alliance uniform. He scraped lightly against her scalp, drawing another near-groan out of her, and then ran both hands down through the length of her hair, spreading it out and drawing apart the clumps with his fingers.

Unbound, her hair fell down her back to the base of her ribcage. Her spine arched a little into the long strokes. Dry but fluid, soft and growing warm as he let it run over his hands, the ends curling slightly, the whole golden mass spreading out over her back and shoulders. Her hair smelled like her. With Miranda buying supplies, she’d used some sort of cleaner that smelled like fruit; now, she used utilitarian Alliance-issue stuff whose bland scent faded quickly, leaving it smelling only, indefinably, Shepard-like. Garrus leaned down and inhaled, letting the warm scent of her drift into his nose and mouth, still smoothing through the ends of her hair with his fingers.

Shepard shuddered all over and twisted, planting a hasty kiss on his brow and cheek before catching his face in both hands and bringing their mouths together. Her lips were urgent and slightly damp, parting at once when he touched his tongue to them. He cupped the back of her head in one hand, her hair sliding between his skin and hers, while he explored her mouth at leisure. Leisure didn’t seem to be her mood, though; her breath was already coming in quick puffs, and her fingers were already working on the catches of his armor. Garrus drew back for a questioning look; her eyes met his, bright and hungry. She reached behind his head to detach his visor and laid it gently aside, tipping her forehead against his. He grinned and reached for her buttons.

Armor and clothing alike came away with practiced efficiency, leaving nothing between them but charged and heated air. He could admire the expanse of her soft pale skin, tinted blue by the light from the fish tank, shadowed here and there with fading bruises. Her hair fell down in loose waves while she pulled him close, while he bent down to taste the skin at the base of her throat, drawing his hands through her hair and down her spine. Her hands and lips were just as busy on his neck, at his waist, with all the tricks she learned over the last months. She was the one who led him to her bed and flung herself down, pulling him down with her, into her. Her hair fanned out bright against the sheets as she pressed her head back into them; he liked watching the tendrils falling over her shoulders and breasts shift as her chest heaved with rapid breaths. Shepard liked to claim she wasn’t noisy, but she gasped and groaned for him, at last, her body tightening and arching, her eyes squeezed shut, and it didn’t take him long to follow with her hands and her hips urging him on.

After, he lay beside her, looking at the line of her nose and jaw, the delicate spray of spots over her cheeks, how her hair draped over his shoulder. He reached out and combed his fingers through her hair again, spiraling one lock loosely around his finger, and watched her lips spread out into a smile. Her eyes opened, green and deep, and, momentarily unshadowed by the burdens placed upon her.

Then her console, across the room, chimed an insistent alert, chasing away her peaceful, relaxed expression. Shepard sighed and started to push herself up from where she lay.

Garrus tightened his hold on her hair where it twisted around his finger. “No.”

Her eyebrows went up, and then she frowned. “Garrus. I need to answer that.”

“It’ll keep. You need a break.”

She was trying to look stern, but it was hard when she was prone and naked, her hair tumbling loose, and a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I didn’t just have one?”

“Not enough. You need rest. You’ve been at it all day.”

She frowned again and then relented. “Fine. An hour.”

“Good,” he said, cautiously stroking her hair again. She sighed and closed her eyes under the soft touch.

If she actually fell asleep, he resolved not to wake her for at least two. And disable the console’s alarm while he was at it.

For now, though, he could watch her rest and smooth his fingers through her rumpled hair.


End file.
